But first let's start with a brief history of what we call today a chatbot which in a way paved the way for the current trend of AI.

The very first recorded chat-bot was a psuedo-ai psychologist by the name of ELISA - created approximately in 1966 - who interacted with her human patients mostly by replying something to the effect of "How does that make you feel" when she got a response.

Chatbots evolved further into bots that could give more catered responses by listening for keywords and eventually laid much of the groundwork for what has become arguably the most well-known AI today - the female voiced Siri.

For your business though it has become tougher and tougher to get back to everyone immediately if yo have say a Facebook page or other presence online. Chatbots are a great solution to help alleviate some of your busy work and potentially save you money simultaneously.

Aweber - A Weber is a site that caters more to e-newsletters and autoresponders.

Mailchimp - Mailchimp is a great way to get started in building your email list. they also offer autoresponders as part of their offering.

Active Campaign - Active campaign is a site made specifically for ...well...campaigns. They also offer autoresponders as part of their campaign packages. To find out more about their autoresponders - check here: https://help.activecampaign.com/hc/en-us/articles/206535504-Autoresponder-campaigns​ ​​

Having a lead capture page is becoming more and more necessary for businesses these days. As the name suggests the sole purpose of the page is to influence potential leads to give their information usually in exchange for something of value to the target market. There are now a growing number of design applications you can use to create lead pages. Here are 5 you can start using for free today.

If you would like to start a Mastermind group and can't seem to put together a group of reliable friends looking for the same goals and desires. You may want to try one of these 3 sources for potential Masterminds.

1) Networking events - Networking events are always a great place to meet people who are also engaged in striving towards goals and attempting to work on self-development. The goal of a Mastermind is improving the circumstances of those within the group and you're likely to find many people looking for new strategies and points of view to better achieve their goals.

2) Online Groups - Facebook is an obvious place to look for people with similar interests. There are groups for Business Owners, Groups for Entrepreneurs, groups for Want-trepreneurs and everything in between. My current Mastermind is the product of meeting similarly minded people within the center of one of these groups that came together with the combined goal of exceeding their expectations with the help of the Mastermind.

​3) Linkedin - This is a place online specifically built for business professionals to connect. In that connecting you can learn a decent amount about a person, their experience and more importantly the connection 2nd and 3rd degree connections they have. You can also see if they have severla people who endorse and support them, their skills and their ideas or not so much.

This is not an exhuastive list by any means but a good place to start. If you need a Mastermind in your life feel free to contact us today.

1) Insightly is a great (contact relationship management) CRM software that allows you to handle up to 2500 prospects at a time for free. Now once you exceed that you'll of course need to start paying them but by that time if you've worked your list right hopefully you'll have more than enough profit from which to pay them with.

2) Hubspot - Hubspot's unofficial motto is "it's always free". This may be true to a point but once your leads begin to grow they will eventually begin to charge. Be aware of this, but also be aware that their success is linked directly to your success so when you think about it, it is a great form of WIN-WIN strategy.

3) FreeCRM (for the 1st year) - FreeCRM is a SAAS system that offers a whopping 100,000 contacts free of charge the first year. But there's the catch once, you have found 100,000 contacts (A ginormous database by most small business standards) or more likely, once your year long trial has run out you must begin to pay them - starting as of this writing at $30 a month. But let's be honest, if you can somehow go from a list of nothing to a list of 100,000 contacts...$30 a month will either be a no-brainer or the least of your worries.

So if you still haven't found a CRM right for you and Salesforce seems like it may be a bit much, try one of these 3 CRMs for free - at least at first. Also if you have the scoop on an awesome app to replace these, please put it in the comments.

Finding new leads is necessary for any online business. These lead magnets are great tools to encourage potential clients to go the next step with you and give their information in exchange for higher level content from you.

1) White Paper - Wikipedia defines a white paper as "A white paper is an authoritative report or guide that informs readers concisely about a complex issue and presents the issuing body's philosophy on the matter. ... In business, a white paper is closer to a form of marketing presentation, a tool meant to persuade customers and partners and promote a product or viewpoint."

Furthermore there are 3 main types of white papers:a) Backgrounder - this type of white paper usually offers the technical details of a certain product offering and/or it's benefits. b) Numbered list - this is just a list of tips, tricks or sometimes bringing negative qualities of competitors to light. In the latter case it is most effective when using fear, uncertainty or doubt about alternatives to your solution. c) Problem/Solution - This is a common type of lead magnet in which a common problem for your target market is detailed and your product or service is detailed as potential solution to this issue.

2) Short Video Training - exactly like it sounds this would be a relatively short training on a subject that goes a little more in depth than what you currently offer for free (or without login) online. Potential clients must give up their email before going forward.

3) E-book - This is a mainstay of lead magnets that will allow you to gain more leads by presenting solutions or guides in a relatively short e-book.

For more information about lead magnets. Please contact us and share how we can further assist you. ​

After polling entrepreneurs and digital marketers last week 40% of respondents say that “in-person networking” is still the best way to generate leads.

One respondent said“All my business this year has come from personal interaction.”The next most popular answer was Podcasting, followed by Organic Social and finally one respondent described his lead generation as “Other” coming from :“Ads placed in Online newsletter -as a local business, this website gets a lot of exposure to the type of clients we are hoping to reach”Erik K Johnson, founder of Podcast Talent Coach (www.PodcastTalentCoach.com) said that his podcast is ““….the most consistent way to get in front of my niche.”Do you think your answers would be a lot different? Share your feedback in the comments section. And keep an eye out for next week’s question which will be

​Hootsuite.com is a great app and website for those who like to schedule content to keep consistency with your audience. The free version of the app allows you to do the following:

Allows you to schedule multiple posts across 3 platforms -

The platform allows you to schedule out content across up to three platforms. The Platforms that hootsuite currently supports are:

Twitter

Facebook

Google+

LinkedIn

(And to a lesser degree)

YouTube &

Instagram

Allows you to create campaigns for contests or to increase email sign ups.

You can create campaigns to tackle several things. But the main two options are sweepstakes and contest. Photo contest, Video Contest, Instagram and Twitter contests are other options to drive engagement for your brand.

Allows you to create reports

Another great feature of Hootsuite is the ability to create reports based on the effectiveness of your recent social strategy. You can pull in and analyze information as far as things such like clicks to your links, engagement on different platforms, and other insights.

For the busy entrepreneur or small business owner this is a great app and will only allow you to increase and improve your engagement with a steady flow of posts. At the same time if you schedule the posts you are saving time and money in the long run as you can keep the consistency that your followers want without sacrificing your schedule to make sure a post goes up in a timely fashion.If you need further help with your journey with social or marketing in general please feel free to reach out to us at carte-blanche-media.com.

​Have you ever been on Twitter relishing in the fact that your followers finally hit the 1,000 mark or even 10,000 mark only to find a few hours or days later your followers have now dropped to 9,998 ? You want to find out who those two malcontents are that would dare unfollow you. You of course look through your recent followers looking for gaps in people who’ve recently followed you only to give up after the first 20 – 30 profiles as you realize you may be on a wild goose hunt.OrHave you ever wished there were an easier way to look for profiles similar to yours or your target market instead of just searching for hashtags that may or may not be appropriate?Well look no further – there is an answer. The name of the site/app is Crowdfire www.Crowdfireapp.com and if you aren’t already using this app you should begin using it today.

BACKGROUND: Crowdfire has been around for almost 8 years at this point and the app allows Twitter and now Instagram users to grow their audience in fairly organic ways. There are quite a few features but for the sake of time I’ll narrow it down to my 5 favorite features.

FEATURES:

The top 5 features in my opinion include:1)The ability to identify fansThe app allows you to view those people who follow you but whom you don’t follow. These would be considered by most to be your “fans”. People who follow you even after you’ve unfollowed them or people you have never followed you are a good group to consider as potential leads if you’re on Twitter or Instagram for business.2)The ability to identify recent unfollowersFor the longest time this was the most frustrating thing. You would get to a certain number of followers think life is good and then suddenly you go from 2,000 followers to 1,997 after you posted the questionable political post or maybe just did not have any new activity for several days. The “Recent unfollower” tab allows you to identify these unfollowers and unfollow them if you happen to be following them in the meantime – up to 100 people can be unfollowed daily.

3)The ability to identify most recent followersMaybe you did a recent post on your happy hour event or shared something rather private that went viral and generated a lot of buzz. Identifying recent followers may allow you to segment your market much more than if you simply look on Twitter for recent activity as sometimes not all of your new followers register or show.4)The ability to keyword follow by profile instead of just by postWhen you use the search function in Twitter it can be really helpful but sometimes it can bring up a lot of junk and unrelated profiles. The Keyword follow tool on this app allows you to identify several different ways either by a word or phrase or it’s hashtag. This allows you find the right type of people to follow to cater, again, to your target market.5)The ability to blacklist or whitelist profiles. This is really 2 distinct functions but since they are polar opposites I’ve condensed them down to a single point. Blacklist is just like how it sounds. You can determine who you will never follow because they’re a troll, a competitor or maybe just seems like a suspect or NSFW account you’d rather not get DM’s from.

Some honorable mentions are the ability to automate DM’s, identify all nonfollowers, & the ability to copy followers of other profiles.

COST:

Now like any similar platform there is both a FREE and a paid version. The free version allows you to get pretty far but if you have multiple accounts that you manage you may want to consider one of the premium versions that are fairly priced especially when you consider all of the benefits offered by the app. The pricing ranges from $9.99 for 2 managed accounts up to $199.99 for the Jupiter (Enterprise version) That can link up to 100 different accounts.

Overall I would recommend the app to anyone looking to grow their tribe or influence via Twitter or Instagram.

Please like and share if you found this helpful.

If you need more help with Social or just want someone to handle things like Crowdfire for you – Contact us at carte-blanche-media.com for more assistance. ​